The downside to working in the office all day, every day is that packing lunch is a macabre affair

Today's noontime menu:

-banana (1)
-carrot (1)
-crackers
-cheddar cheese (5 slices)
-cottage cheese
-hardboiled egg (1)

I also have a bag of rice cakes in my desk drawer.

I am a good eater. I like to eat. I do not "diet."

This lunch, which I patched together at the last minute out of what was to hand in the kitchen, depresses me.

I am now teaching at an institution with one of the highest rated food services in the country. It's outstanding. But I will not allow myself to drop $8-$10 a day on lunch, especially not at what happens to be a lean financial time for my family.

So...what on earth do people take for lunch? I used to do this regularly, like back when I was 23 and had a miserable office job--although I do remember an exhausting number of cheese sandwiches being consumed in that period.

Leftovers, when we have easily transportable leftovers, are an obvious solution, but otherwise...? I need to get better at this.

A New Year's convention that I'm adopting for the first time

Eh, what the heck. I'll do this rather than work on my MLA paper. But be prepared for lots of N/As.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?

• Hosted three different sets of parent-visitors (my dad and stepmom, TM's parents, my mom and her friend) in a house that I actually own (or am at least paying a mortgage on)
• Paid a mortgage
• Had an article come out in a fancy journal
• Went to Ireland
• Paid for my mom to come with me on a trip (to Ireland, in this case. It was a very grown-up feeling kind of thing to pay for her! In fairness, she covered meals on the trip--but I bought the plane tickets and hotel rooms and all. This actually worked out really well for me psychologically, because I'd paid for everything up front and didn't have to fret about my bank account during the vacation proper)
• Rented a car all by myself
• Drove on the left
  
• Met a currently very prominent and (to my mind) rather loathsome political personage
  
• Got pregnant

The theme here seems to be: Grown-up stuff. Maybe I'm finally a proper adult?

Oh, and there were lots of knitting and gardening adventures, and probably a bunch of other stuff, too. I can't actually remember spring break at all, for example, so who knows what happened in the first half of the year.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I don't remember if I had any. I think that I wanted to be kinder and/or more generous? I'm not sure that I kept them, if so. Those don't seem like quite the sorts of things that you can self-evaluate very easily.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

A couple of co-workers--actually, quite a few co-workers. Probably some other people, too, but I can't think of them right now. (I'm not putting that much effort into this exercise, evidently.)

4. Did anyone close to you die?

A cousin on my dad's side--a few generations older than me. Well, she was 91 or thereabouts, so quite a bit older. I hadn't seen her in a long time, but she was someone we always visited over the holidays until my family left the state I grew up in (when I was in my mid-twenties), so she was one of the relatives I actually knew best. (We're a pretty scattered--and smallish--family.)

I think that that's it.

5. What countries did you visit?

Ireland! (And Belgium and Finland in 2010--just need to toss those in here, even though they're past their expiration dates.)

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

A healthy baby? Maternity leave?

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Sept. 4--the date at which my pregnancy officially starts. (This is a bit of a theme, no?) Not sure about any others.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Good question. Um...making it through the Fall semester, which was inexplicably difficult? Getting a short story published (in a weird little on-line venue)? Making a journal out of paper I made myself? Those aren't very momentous. It's not that I haven't been doing things, but nothing feels like a Big Climactic Achievement. And that's fine. I don't think that life is normally measured in that way, and--as we all know better and better as we age--the thrill of The Achievement invariably wears off.

Oh! Just remembered! Paid off my student loans! That counts.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Again, not sure. I think that I was less available to some of my students this past semester than I normally am, or would like to be--but I also think that, ultimately, that was a good thing. Setting some stronger boundaries in my professional life is something that I'd like to work on this year. So no--this wasn't a failure.

Getting an article rejected, I guess, but "failure" seems like a pretty strong word for one of the inevitable set-backs of an academic career.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

A couple of colds and headaches, but that's all.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

No major purchases this year. I did pay for a year's subscription to a streaming yoga video service, which I liked a lot and will continue to use. And I bought some pretty sock yarn. Also a few really wonderful meals out with TM.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

TM, who is fantastic at all times.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Oh, feh, I don't know. Pass.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Mortgage. Trip to Ireland.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Being pregnant (although it took a while to sink in. It's still sinking in, in fact, and the excitement is still mixed with anxiety, so "really, really, really" is pretty much relative). And TM had a couple of articles accepted, which was great.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?

N/A (I've listened to amazingly little music this year, in fact.)

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?

I was pretty happy this time last year, I believe, so I'm probably about the same on that score. Weight-wise, well, I'm up a few pounds, but to say that I'm "fatter" would be unfair, given the circumstances. Financially, close to the same, but we're in slightly less debt, so that counts as "richer," right?

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Yoga. Meditate. I gave up both in the fall due to first-trimester fatigue, which I believe was a legitimate excuse, but I intend to get back into them now that I'm feeling better. I have started doing yoga again, in fact.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Worry, probably. That's always the case.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

I spent it back East with my family. The littlest nephew was incredibly cute.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?

Already was.

22. How many one-night stands?

0

23. What was your favorite TV program?

Doc Martin.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

No.

25. What was the best book you read?

Scott Russell Sanders, A Private History of Awe.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

N/A

27. What did you want and get?

A positive pregnancy test.

28. What did you want and not get?

Can't think of anything at the moment.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

I saw exactly one movie in a theater--The Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It was pretty good. This brings the total number of movies that I've seen in theaters since I started dating TM (in April 2008) up to 2: Our first was Metropolis. (I'm probably a poser, but I sort of love having absolutely no idea what's going on in the entertainment industry.)

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I was 35. We bought a new oven because ours broke the night before. My dad and stepmom took me and TM out for a nice dinner.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Immeasurably more satisfying? I have no idea.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

Eh?

33. What kept you sane?

I wasn't aware that insanity was such a proximate risk.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

N/A, for reals.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?

Oh, whatever particularly outrageous thing TM read me out of the Times on any given morning.

36. Who did you miss?

A couple of friends. Family, sometimes. But I got to see a lot of them in the last few months!

37. Who was the best new person you met?

I don't know. I'm sure that there were some good ones, though.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.

No, thank you!

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

I repeat: No, thank you!

One of the ways in which I suck

I'm pretty bad at answering emails. I get better during the school year, but only with my Field College account; my regular gmail languishes pretty badly year-round. It's not that I don't enjoy hearing from people--I just always put off writing back, and then (alas) I'm afraid that I lose interest in talking about myself. And then I feel guilty, and Too Much Time Has Passed, etc. etc. same old story.

And then there's the email account associated with this blog.

Hoo, I'm sorry, anyone who tried to contact me via that address since, oh, mid-July! Because apparently that was the last time I checked it. And as it happens, in addition to the MoveOn.org exhortations and messages from Al Gore & Co, I had some actual, real-life messages in there! Including some actual, real-life work-related stuff!

I'm sorry. Apparently, what I really need is Another Damned Notorious Answer Your Goddamn Email Group.

****

In other news, here's a picture of the travel diary that I made for my trip to Ireland this summer. Isn't it nice?

(On location at a pub in Limerick.)

"Low-Hanging Fruit": The Low-Hanging Fruit of Metaphors?

So TM and I were having a conversation the other night, and he used the phrase"low-hanging fruit." I smirked, as I ALWAYS do when I hear that phrase, and we got into a discussion of why I can't hear (let alone say) it with a straight face. I think that it has something to do with how the first time I heard it, it was in reference to someone who used the phrase a lot (are you following me?), and my friend, who was talking about him, said, "I'd like to kick him in his low-hanging fruit."

You get where I'm going with this.

Also, I have a tendency to "hear" it punctuated as "low, hanging fruit" and to imagine it said in a voice like that of the narrator in Rocky Horror Picture Show when he describes the clouds as "heavy, black, and pendulous." (And if you've ever seen or experienced the interactive version of RHPS, you know that the shout-out line only adds to the immodest association hinted at above.)

So yes, I do have a juvenile streak, much as I try to hide it. (See this post for additional evidence.)

SO ANYWAY, we then started talking about alternative metaphors/cliches, and we couldn't think of any good ones. I suggested "easy target," but that doesn't mean quite the same thing. As TM pointed out, "low-hanging fruit" clearly suggests the easily reachable targets that you accomplish first, with the expectation that you will then get into the higher branches with their less-reachable fruit; "easy target" doesn't imply any more difficult targets to come.

And then we were pretty much stumped.

Thus I give it to you, dear readers. What alternative metaphor(s) would you suggest? Are there other figures of speech that serve the same purpose? Or is there a new metaphor, possibly less testicular, just waiting to be coined?

WHY

is there a DEAD FISH under the pine tree in the neighbor's yard? --the tree, I might add, that is right up next to our property?

Why, exactly?

And for how long will the smell pervade the Eastern end of our yard?

(I realize that this is a peculiar return to blogging after nearly a month's hiatus. But it needed to be said more urgently, apparently, than anything else that I could impart.)

(More soon.)

Happy new year!

We are home, home, home! It is exquisite.

We got back at around noon yesterday--after an all-day drive on Thursday, a little dinner party and an overnight in City to the North, and then a mere 2.5 hours of driving yesterday. It's good to be here--everything is exactly where it ought to be. Both TM's parents and my mother are not...um, like us (or, especially, me) when it comes to housekeeping and home arrangement. TM's folks just have loads of stuff--stacks of magazines and books and papers, boxes and boxes of crackers or whatever--stashed around the house (not like hoarders, but like people who don't get rid of stuff--there's a difference, really), and my mom is an artist whose dense, dark, creepy little collages sort of expand out to fill the entire house. Her house is very interesting, but it's also a complete mess and drives me a bit crazy. We, on the other hand, are all about the open space and the findability of objects and light coming in through the windows and whatnot. I love our house.

New Year's Eve was a very quiet affair. We're both still recovering from the Most Enduring Colds Ever, and were also rather tired; thus, we spent the early afternoon having a Family Nap with the cats in the guest room (they're not allowed in the bedroom). In the evening, after dinner, we watched a couple of episodes of "The Office," ate chocolate cake, and were in bed before 11. Hurrah! I despise watching the ball drop (which we, being sans TV, couldn't really do anyway) and find New Year's generally overrated; since not a one of the parties that I've been to in Field Town has lasted past 10:15, I couldn't imagine that even a party would make it to midnight. Besides, there weren't any parties. So it was quite lovely to go to sleep and wake up at a reasonable hour, very rested, on New Year's day.

So today, I shall do the following, in an effort to a) get back on track with some stuff after the long trip and b) start the year off in a constructive fashion: 1) practice yoga at some point, and 2) work on an article proposal. Perhaps I shall also knit. And I need to walk down to the office to pick up an article. Oh, and I need to make granola.

Resolutions? I have two. One is to get my yoga practice in order. I subscribe to this online thing where I get streaming yoga videos for a very reasonable price, and I need to just do one of them every couple of days. That's all. The second resolution actually comes out of that reverb10 thing where people had to come up with a word that they wanted to define 2011. It made me think about how quick we are to think about resolutions in terms of improving our own lives--but maybe it'd be good (at least for me) to think outside of my own comfort? So the word/resolution that I thought of was "Kindness." I'm going to try to be kinder, just in general. Not that I'm horrible as-is, but I can be selfish, and impatient, and surely my comments on students' papers could be less sarcastic now and again. Thus, resolution no. 2.

I shall conclude this post with pictures of the guest room, which is where we napped yesterday. Enjoy!

A Thing that I Noticed Today

I say "fait accompli" a lot.

At least, a lot for those words.

Like a couple of times a week, lately.

Why isn't anyone blogging?

OK, I know. I've not exactly been the poster child of blogger profligacy.

But I dunno, things aren't very exciting. I entered all my final grades today, so that's done. Then I wrapped presents at the homeless shelter for two hours. Might I add that I had a blast? I didn't really talk to anyone, just totally focused on picking out and wrapping the presents. The only bad part was that all the presents for girls were HYPER pink, and I couldn't bear to give anyone a Barbie or Barbieclone. This might prompt me to buy some cool books or something to donate next year--I mean, not all young females are in love with make-up and the prospect of giant boobs.

Leaving on Friday for Northern City, followed a few days later by The Great Drive East.

The cats are really snuggly lately. You can't sit down without a Priss creeping into your lap.

We had four parties at our house last week--two final seminar parties (TM's seminar met right before mine, so there was some awkward overlap where my students had to stand around the kitchen with me while I made coffee), a party for the Philosophy and Religion majors, and then a party for our friends and ALL THEIR MILLION KIDS on Sunday night. Good lord. I didn't actually expect all the small noisy people to show up, but there they were. There was a frenzy of coloring (and, apparently, almond-spitting) in the upstairs guest room/attic, then everyone was gone. It was a fun party, though.

Erm...anything else? I don't think so. See? I told you I had nothing much to say.

Nearly Perfect Weekend

The imperfect this weekend was TM's absence--he's away at a conference--but the solitude might have been good for me, to be honest; the last four weeks have been such a flurry of activity, all of it involving other people, that my powerful introverted tendencies were demanding some rest and restoration absent human contact.

So here's what I do on a perfect weekend, school-year style:

• Schoolwork: Read nearly everything I'm teaching this week; put together next paper prompt for Survey; assigned readings and assignment for Thursday's seminar. I'm conferencing in Comp this week, so there was only a little planning to be done for that (figuring out what to tell them to bring to their conferences, a few emails to write, etc.).
• Housework: Did all the laundry (I heart my clothesline! Laundry is my favorite chore. The fact that it was sunny and 70 degrees this weekend, while weird, made laundrifying even more pleasurable than usual); raked a good bit of the yard (well, I raked for one hour, and decided that that was sufficient; it also gave us more leaf-mulch potential than we can possibly exploit); enormous grocery trip to the brand new nice grocery store in Nominally Ordinary City, along with a few miscellaneous purchases from Discount Grocery, Standard Grocery, and the Pet Store; took out the compost. I still need to vacuum tonight before TM gets home, though. Oh! Those accursed false ladybugs that DIE all over the place! Ech. Our accursed off-white wall-to-wall carpeting doesn't help matters, either, and you can only cover so much of it with area rugs.
  
• Food-wise: I cooked like crazy yesterday. TM had expressed an interest in mushrooms, so I complied with mushroom pate and mushroom pie on a spinach crust; we also now have split pea soup, a lovely walnut-onion bread (in four little boules), and granola to last for ten days. TM usually makes a huge quantity of food for lunches on the weekend, so I enjoyed being able to reciprocate--although it left me pretty wiped out by 6:30 yesterday evening. And I also had that weird thing where you cook a lot and then think you've eaten a lot, even though you haven't, so I didn't really eat enough for dinner, but that's OK. I rounded it out with a little whiskey before bed.
• Exercise! I did some lovely yoga on Saturday night and went swimming yesterday afternoon. I cut myself a little swimming slack, though (35 minutes/1400 m instead of 40-45 minutes/1 mile), because my arms were achy from all the raking.
• Cats: Lots of cuddle time.
• Pleasure: Watched a goofy British movie and a documentary about gender and politics. I'm also reading Wolf Hall for this Booker-book club thing that we're organizing at Field, and it's wonderful to have a good reason to read for pleasure! And during the school year, too!
  
• Scholarship: Naught. That's okay, though.
• Sleep: Plenty, although the cats troubled my repose very early on Saturday morning. Naps on the couch both days. The house was so very quiet, all the little kitties dozing on their cushions.
• Social activities: Why, none! I did participate in the College open house on Saturday, giving a little spiel on the Humanities with a colleague, and that was fine. It was enough, in fact; I reveled in my solitude these two days.
  

Ah, yes. I feel rested and relaxed. What a nice way to start the week! Unfortunately, three days of comp conferences will wear me out plenty, but after the incredible exhaustion that was killing me last Monday-Thursday (I rallied, more or less, on Friday), I'm just delighted to be starting out strong.

Well okay then.

All my grades are entered (but two, which are both waiting on late paper-things that will come in this weekend). My K'zoo paper is mostly done. I have met with weepy plagiarists--whom I actually believe to have been unintentional in their plagiarism, if frighteningly ignorant--and cleaned out some of my folders. I have done other things, such as getting my oil changed and trying unsuccessfully to figure out why we need to pay for the church's organist if he can't actually play at our wedding (although we'd like him to). Tonight is an end-of-the-year potluck and tomorrow I drive off for Kalamazoo. So let me organize myself with a to-do list, as thusly:

• clean the filth out of my house
• make yogurt to use up big jar of milk
• make granola so that I have something to eat for breakfast
• water garden and potted plants
• finish revising K'zoo paper
• gather things together for K'zoo
  
• perform some kind of exercise--yoga or jog
• go to office to do something or other (what is it? Oh yeah--I need to mail back some papers, turn in a form or two, etc. etc.)
• walk through the Lilac Arboretum
  
• go to the store and then make lentil salad for potluck
• think very seriously about what to wear at Kalamazoo. Do I dare to try out my new Fluevogs?

I apologize for the tediousness of this post, but actually I do enjoy reading other people's to-do lists, so I trust that you will enjoy the same. And now, I will conclude with a picture of said Fluevogs.


See some of you very soon!

This, That, Other

Today felt like summer. This is dangerous, but not too dangerous: three days of school to go, and I actually don't have much school-related work to do at the moment. I will soon, of course (I get papers and/or exams on: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Monday (x2)), but there's a bit of a lull here, when the grading hasn't started to roll in and the actual teaching portion of my year is pretty much over.

I gave my Presentation yesterday, and it was okay. Seven people were in attendance, including The Minister--about what I expected, actually. Approximately 8 minutes before I began, a student was sent in to tell me that the luncheon started at a quarter to twelve and could I cut my presentation 20 minutes short? Would that mean I'd have to skip a lot? Um, yeah, like half the presentation. So I told my little audience that they could leave early if they had to get to lunch, and I cut a few things out (weaker portions of the presentation, anyway) and wrapped it up about 10 minutes early. It wasn't painful. I did feel that I was babbling, as I so often do when I straight-up lecture, but it's over, and it was fine.

Now I just have that Kalamazoo paper. It's drafted, but I'm not at all happy with the last 1/3. In rereading part of Huge Middle English Dream Poem (HMEDP) last week, I think that I figured out an angle to help make that portion of the paper more compelling and to deepen the argument. Now I just need to do it (and read around to see whether other people could help me out here, and possibly read a little bit more of HMEDP).

What else? Well, we're supposed to be planning a wedding, so I guess I've got that going on. So far we're keeping it on the cheap, for reals, even though it looks like the guest list will be longer than originally anticipated. I bought a J. Crew dress for $78 and got some cool Fluevogs on enormous sale, although I'm considering wearing some $2.50 thrift store shoes instead (they're white strappy little sandals with low heels; the advantage over the Fluevogs is that they'd be a lot less hot, since the Fs are closed-toe) (also, the Fs have 3" heels, and I never wear heels, so this is scaring me kind of a lot). We've got a church and the reception will be in my mom's backyard. The officiant and the photographer are our friends; Mom (an artist) is designing the invitations; music will be a combination of ipod and family members, using my brother's homemade amps and speaker system. There's a restaurant near Mom's that does pretty chichi organical American fare; while the restaurant itself is a little pricey, their DIY catering is way cheap--as in, we could easily get a substantial and interesting meal for like under $8 a person.

All this cheapness is good, because of course we have to move soon--sadly, my delightful little cottage is waaaay too small for two people and two cats, especially when one of those people likes a good kitchen and both of those people own, you know, clothes--and the rental properties around here are few and far between. Not eager to buy, we're currently working on convincing a seller to rent her place to us for a while. Hopefully that'll work out; the house is a good size for us, although it is on a busy road (but across from a cemetary, so maybe that will even things out).

In other news, I went "running" on Friday and today. I use "running" loosely because I am so not a runner; I swim and do yoga, but the pool had been closed for repairs since February, and my home yoga practice, while usually regular (I fell apart a bit this month) and very good at keeping me in touch with my body, or something, doesn't give me much in the way of a cardio work-out. I also don't like seeing yoga as primarily a fitness activity, so I think that I need something else. So I've tried jogging (more appropriate than "running") for ten minutes at a time; since I don't have a watch, I carry my cell phone--with the alarm set for ten minutes and on vibrate--in my sports bra. It works pretty well, although the phone gets a little gross. But then, I'm apparently a person who buys sandals at thrift stores, so what the hell.

Annoyingly Fortunate

Okay, so I'm going to spill the other good news now. The Minister and I are engaged.

I was talking to my dear friend H last night (hi H!), telling her about the engagement, the possible book contract, the recent trip to the Caribbean, the free plane ticket to and resultant month to be spent in France this summer...and it dawned on me: This month, I am downright irritating.

No worries, though. I continue to be stressed, aggravated, and overworked in the usual proportions. Bitching to resume shortly, I promise.

I'm so linear

For a reason that I can no longer recall, I recently took my ipod off of Shuffle. So now when I listen to an album I listen to it straight through, in the order that God--er, the artist--intended.

This gives me a feeling of tremendous virtue.

Perhaps I'm wound even tighter than I realized.

How, how, how

did the theme song from "Muppet Babies" get stuck in my head?

Here, if you'd like to share in my suffering:

?!?!?!? This HAS to be wrong

I just got a gas bill for more than $350.

For two weeks.

Now, it's true that I didn't pay for gas in my old place--so I haven't paid it in the last year--but this has to be wrong. There's no fucking way. Right? Right??? I know that gas prices have been going up and all, but....

(Oh, and it's summer, so I'm not even heating the joint. Not that this would be acceptable if I were. But even more reason for this to be wrong. Right?)

How I wish the utilities company were still open--I don't think that I can live with this outrage until morning. GOD I hate shit like this. Because of course this is my first bill in this new place, so who knows? There could be like a leak or something and maybe I did use that much gas, however inadvertently, and how am I going to get the New Landlords to pay for it? Argh. I need reassuring, and there's no one around to do it.

Birthday's over. Back to work. Seriously.

Thanks for the birthday well-wishing, one and all! It was a good day. The weather was gorgeous (after two days of HOT and one day of rainy, I got lucky). I went to the DMV and am now the proud possessor of a Field State driver's license, with possibly the worst picture of me ever thereupon. Seriously, I look like I just killed three people and I don't care. And also I have this weird kind of hippie thing going on with my fluffy hair and gauzy shirt.* So I'm like a hippie axe-murderer who is resigned to having just been caught. It's awful. Think the lead character from Monster (which I haven't seen, but I have seen the cover in the video store. Yikes).

[*I don't look like a hippie, not normally. I don't know what was going on that morning.]

I also got my license plates! All I need now is the car!

I think that Tuesday was pretty much the first weekday of summer vacation when the DMV was open (it's closed on Mondays), so I got to see lots of kidlets come to take their road tests. It was pretty cute. Even the obviously "cool" kids were pretty subdued and quiet; nerves ran high in the room that day. And they were all there with their mothers (I guess the dads had to work), but even that didn't seem to trigger any evident sarcasm reflexes. No, they were all quiet and solemn, filling out their forms in their enormous tennis shoes, and it was really sort of adorable. Until I thought: Good god, these outrageously young children will now be driving. Yikes. How did I feel so old when I was 16?

That was that for the DMV. Later I had dinner with the Minister, who is an amazingly fantastic cook eager for any opportunity to display his skills. May I just say, strawberry soup?

But now, alas, it is back to the grind. I have to do the following:

• revise chapter 4 yet again and enter the revisions (this chapter will not die! Why does it suck so much? Why do I repeat myself so often? Why is the topic so boring? What on earth is my point?) (I am, perhaps, exaggerating somewhat; I do in fact have an argument and have cut out some of the redundancies. But the above is how I feel every time I look at these pages);
  
• revise chapter 5 (underway, and it's in much better shape than its predecessor);
• send out proposals to 4 more publishers (= target for this week);
• write up a short description of my new admin gig so that I can get my contract changed (been due for like a month);
• order books for my comp classes, for the love of God;
• buy a plane ticket to go get the car and visit a handful of people;
• acquire some mulch for the garden;
• admire the grass that has begun sprouting, thanks to my reseeding (it worked!!);
• swim;
  
• write an article?

In better news, yesterday I moved into the office across the hall from the storage closet to which I was consigned this past year. I now have a window! Clearly, an exponential increase in my productivity will result from this splendid change.

Oh, and also, it's my birthday

32, baby. Just one year to go until the real age of perfection.

Well, this is tiresome

My phone just randomly stopped working when I was in the middle of a call to my mom. Now I'm waiting for my "live chat" customer service person to check on something. She's been gone for a while. It's boring.

At least I'm in charge of the hold music.

ETA: Don't worry! Because I know you were worried. But my phone is okay. I don't know what happened--this was all very strange. At least Natavia was able to fix my problem somehow.

Goodness

(Time to bump the maudlin down from Position 1, I say.)

Thing I am happy about.

1. Although it's currently 41 degrees out and rainy with no foreseeable improvement in the near future, and although the leaves have not yet begun their unfurl, there are little flowers here and there, the grass is noticeably greener, and the birdsong these last few weeks has been phenomenal. I have, on my own, learned to identify the warble of the cardinal, and I am infallible in my cardinallocation. Having lived in urbanish environments for so long, I hadn't realized just how happy birds' singing makes me. The coinage "cardinallocation" is also pleasing.
2. School ends in just under 2 weeks. What with peer workshop days and a library resource day, I only have 11 preps to go. And two of those won't really count because they'll be for the last day of class, when we don't have to do much of anything, and 2 more will be negligible because of course evaluations. So there are really only 7 discrete preps to go.
3. I'm teaching some truly awesome courses next year. One is the senior capstone seminar and I get to do whatever I want, so I'm doing some serious medievalist shit which will be awesome, according to me. I don't know how the students will feel, but since they're all senior majors and I know most of them and they're mostly quite good (and they mostly like me, I think), they'll deal and should be fun to work with. The other awesome course is a one-credit honors seminar--it only meets for 50 minutes/week and shouldn't be too taxing--on a topic that I've sort of fantasized about teaching for a long time. So while this means that technically I'll be teaching 5 classes in the fall, I think that I'm okay with it.
   
4. I'm being semi-groomed to take on an administrative-type post next year which would give me a course release. Plus it would be interesting and pretty great on the CV. It might not happen, since I'm so ridiculously new to the college and it's ultimately up to the dean, but apparently no one else wants this position (or any other position--the senior folks here are seriously overworked), so it might happen.
5. I've been reading the application packets for the search committee that I'm on, and the process is fascinating. It's a creative writing search, which helps--I get to read a lot of wonderful short stories and poems without having to think about how I'll teach them. I'm a little worried about getting the search wrapped up before my anticipated Fleeing the Scene date; however, I'm choosing to be optimistic.
6. And finally.... I'm moving! At the end of May! Into the Smallest House in the World! Yes--it's a house! A tiny little guest house. Approx. 650 square feet. TINY. But I thought it would go well with the Smallest College in the World (okay, not the smallest, but pretty damn small) and Tiny Field Town. It's all about miniaturization. What's great, though, is that it has a basement and a garage and a yard. And it is quite seriously adorable and hobbit-house-like (I will post pictures when I move, I promise!) Also, I will be driving all of my furniture and books and things out here in May, and it'll be great to have all my stuff again. I miss my stuff. Lately I've been thinking about my books--for some reason, I keep getting flashes of yearnings to pick up my Proust again; I'm about 5.5 volumes into a beautiful old edition that I've been reading on and off for years--and this makes me acutely conscious of how much I love having my little library around me. I also love setting up new living spaces; I'm quite good at making them nice and homey, if I say so myself.
   
7. Oh, and the Summer Trip of Mystery is still in the works, but I'm not ready to talk about it yet.

That's that. Now: Off to grade!

What's with the All the Hating, David P?

In an otherwise inoffensive Chronicle article ("Get Another Life"), David Perlmutter makes the following two derogatory references to the Middle Ages:

• The university is the site of a perfect storm of 21st-century expectations and medieval bureaucracy, and the promotion-and-tenure process is the clashing point.
• The tenure track may feel like the medieval torture of having each limb pulled in a different direction by whipped horses.

Without any genuine outrage, I nonetheless ask: What's the deal? Yes, everyone knows about drawing and/or quartering; no need to be all elliptical and toss the "medieval" in there. (According to Wikipedia, by the way, the horse-related torture is actually French quartering, and occurred as late as the 18th century. Medieval, I ask?)

More baffling, however, is this "medieval bureaucracy" of which DP speaks. Okay, this might be legitimately outside of my field, but I had no idea that the Middle Ages were particularly known for their byzantine bureaucratic processes. When we think of awful bureaucracy, what usually comes to mind? That's right--Kafka! Not even close to the M.A., my friends.

I sometimes wonder whether periodism is really as legitimately charged an issue as I often make it out to be (if only in my thoughts), but I can't help rolling my eyes--even with a well-maintained sense of humor--at this kind of thing.

Oh well. It's a losing battle.